William August Felsing, 1918-1952

William Felsing was born in Denton, Texas, in 1891, and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at UT. After completing his PhD at MIT under F.G. Keyes and A.A. Noyes, he served in the Chemical Warfare Branch, working on mustard gas properties, which began a lifelong association with military research. During World War II Felsing took leave and worked at Harvard in the Underwater Sound Laboratory, and also did research on aircraft fuels. Other areas of interest included the thermodynamic properties and PVT relationships of organic compounds.

At UT, Felsing served as coordinator of the freshman chemistry course for 18 years, and supervised the dissertations of about 25 graduate students. He was also co-author of three editions of the popular General Chemistry textbook, first with Schoch and later with G.W. Watt. His health declined in later years, and he died of a heart attack in 1952.